


of death, in silence

by vade_brucestephenbucky



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Execution, F/M, Heavy Angst, Non-explicit character death, Past Public Execution By Hanging, Post-Canon, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26757106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vade_brucestephenbucky/pseuds/vade_brucestephenbucky
Summary: Riza Hawkeye did not want to be hanged.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	of death, in silence

**Author's Note:**

> for whumptober 2020 no. 1 - hanging

“First Lady Mustang, do you have a preference for your execution?” she had been asked by a warden, while her hands were shackled by cold steel in the middle of her back as she was led into a grey-walled cell. It was a question she’d been pondering since the end of the war in Ishval, since their restorations were completed, and the trials had begun. When her day of execution and atonement finally arrived, what would the manner of her final breath’s departure be? That day had been coming for a long time, but an answer she still had not found. 

It was here, and she knew, simply one thing about the circumstances of her death, the one thing she did not want.

Riza Hawkeye did not want to be hanged. 

She’d witnessed a public execution, a hanging, on a sweltering midsummer evening of her eleventh year alive, in the center square of her town in the East. A crowd had gathered, one Riza believed to be the entire population of the small, tight-knit village just short of a few. They had encircled the subject, eyes bore on the surly-looking man of around her father’s age, who stood on a wooden pedestal with a beam from which a yellowish colored rope hanging just to the right of his neck. A man in a white suit and greased hair stepped onto the pedestal and asked the crowd to silence themselves. 

Riza blinked and the man was suspended in mid-air, writhing through strangled screams as he fought an imminent and restrictive death. His body went limp in less than a minute, swinging freely from the corded rope. 

The crowd cheered. Hollered. Celebrated. 

It was a primal scene, the archaic and mortal desires of man on display for all to behold. To hail as death graced the scene, drawing a scythe and reaping a soul at the concordant rallying of hundreds, nearly one thousand. 

That same day, Roy arrived at her residence and assumed his position as her father's apprentice.

Two weeks later, that same white-suited man was executed in the same manner, while the deceased had been deemed innocent in a case of fraudulent evidence by tampering. 

But she didn’t have the luxury of being declared not guilty, nor she didn’t want that luxury. She was to atone and cross the river of blood, shed by many who died by her hand. 

“No,” she answered solemnly. 

The warden lowered his head and stepped out of the cell after removing her hands from the restraints, the barred metal gate clanking against the wall as he shut it and turned the key. 

Later that evening, after the warden had left his post and silence shrouded the entrapment, her husband visited and sat by her side, and he asked her the same question. 

“I don’t want to be hanged,” Riza whispered as he wiped her eyes. Her head rested on his shoulder. 

Roy understood, and he wrapped his arm around her tightly. “Then you won’t be,” he said and pressed a kiss to her forehead, shutting his eyes as tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Rest now, we’ll be up before sunrise.” 

He gave the order for the firing squad to be gathered before Riza awoke. 

At the break of dawn that morning, in the solitude of the execution hall, she and her husband's day came to an end by the barrel of an unidentified rifleman, and they were hanged with a bullet instead of a noose.

**Author's Note:**

> i NEVER thought i would be writing Roy and Riza's execution. i never really planned to, and then i got some thoughts in my head early this morning and since whumptober has just begun, i decided to make a ficlet out of it. this is NOT "canon" in my state of our affairs series and is purely for whumptober. 
> 
> BOY DID IT HURT WRITING THIS ONE, my poor heart can't handle the concept of a world WITHOUT Riza Hawkeye and Roy Mustang. and while i do believe they would be spared and would come out of the trials of Ishval alive, it's still a painful thing to think about and to write about.
> 
> if you have any feedback, leave a comment! thank you for reading this gut-wrenching fic <3


End file.
